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Private clubs.  I thought the top swimmers, track athletes and gymnasts already trained outside the NCAA system.

Now NIL might have been changing it, because previously you couldn't take sponsorships.

It probably hurts late bloomers and kids who can't afford it for sure.  But MSU had the best college decathlete a couple years back.  He pulled out midseason in 2024, because the competition schedule conflicted with his training schedule for the 2024 Olympics, and IIRC the other USA decathlete never competed at the collegiate level.  He entered a few NCAA events as an unattached athlete

Your first example proves the point-- he didn't pull out of the NCAA system until he was proven elite.  With fewer or zero Olympic sports on college campuses, there will be a much smaller net. There will be fewer young athletes entering those sports, because there will be nowhere for them to go, post-high school.  And there won't be nearly as much time to identify those promising young athletes.

Right now the American net is cast very wide, because there's an order to the system, and a place to go after high school.  Without that, I suspect that a lot of them either won't bother entering the sport, or they won't be discovered in time for it to make a difference.

No, that's a fair point.  The fact that he was at MSU, famously not a track power, is more evidence.  It's not like he was at Oregon, or Arkansas, or Florida, or Texas.  Even actual track schools weren't looking at him

I really hope you're right that private entities will be able to step in and fill the gap.

Basically what I'm worried about is the funnel or the pipeline of raw potential athletes becoming diminished.  It's like in Sales, when you have fewer quality leads, you inevitably close fewer deals.